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Technology and Engineering
- ISSN: 2470-4180
- Journal of Modern Civil Engineering
Cumulative Effect Quantification of the Spatial Interaction Between Wind Turbines and Birds: A Case Study of Adult White Storks at Eastern Flyway
Pavel Zehtindjiev, Valko Biserkov, Jordan Biserkov, and Nikolay Yordanov
Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
Abstract: The strong demand for energy pushes governments to find solutions in new technologies such as wind power. It is generally considered green, but many aspects of wind power impacts on biodiversity need deeper understanding. In the same time high tech GPS tracking of birds and available public data allow evaluation of spatial interactions between birds and wind farms. In or study we use public resources in order to evaluate cumulative effect of wind turbines on migratory bird species — white stork. White storks are typical soaring birds which use up going thermal air slows for initial start of soaring flights. The species forms flocks up to 15000 individuals during seasonal migrations between Europe and Africa. Therefore, the white storks are used in our study as model species for evaluation of impact on potentially all soaring birds with similar behaviour at migration. The polygon of our study area covers a part of the Eastern fly way of white storks. In our analysis, we consider all 22,885 wind turbines and all 1,207,130 locations of white storks tracked by GPS devices in the area. We obtain 605,609 target points after processing the total of 1,207,130 points in the target territory. According to our results the main component for cumulative impact is density of wind turbines. Our results indicate avoidance of the territories with over 6 turbines per square kilometres and negligee effect of turbines when the density is lower. We provide a new quantitative instrument for calculation of the cumulative consequences of wind power development in large territories and demonstrate how it can be applied for evaluation of impact in respect to location and density of turbines along the Eastern flyway of white storks.
Key words: wind farm, bird migration, barrier effect, displacement
